Support from Your Partner During a Juice Feast

[David Rainoshek]

This is an important topic. So many of us Juice Feast while the rest of the family goes on eating Cherrios and YooHoo. Moreover, family members can feel left out, alienated, or confused by our choice to Juice Feast, and this can cause strain in a relationship and for you as a Juice Feaster.

Therese wrote an excellent blog post earlier that addressed some of these issues she is facing, and how it has impacted her experience during this year's 2009 Global Juice Feast (you can read about it here), and I wanted to re-post my reply particularly concerning supporting, and being supported by, your partner. Thank you Therese for providing the opportunity for this to be written for everyone's benefit. You are a shining light!



Hi Therese,

It is important to understand the ways that men and women find meaning in their lives.

The feminine grows and finds meaning through a feeling of fullness. Fullness at home, acceptance, fullness of relationships and expression - even fullness in the belly from a child and proper nourishment from food.

The masculine grows and finds meaning through a feeling or experience of freedom. Freedom from trouble, freedom from being asked to do something he does not want to do, freedom from the world sometimes. This freedom can express itself in a positive or negative way, just as feminine fullness can.

You are seeking the fullness of the unconditional love and support of your husband for what you are doing. He is seeking the freedom of having to do what you are doing, of being expected to change, of being judged for wanting to eat what he wants to eat - for better or worse.

You will receive his support when you let him know this. Offer him unconditional love and freedom to eat the foods he wants to eat, if he will unconditionally love and support you in Juice Feasting and eating a plant-based diet.

You can do a little Byron Katie "Loving What Is" practice vis-a-vis his eating by saying (TO YOURSELF :) ) "I look forward to my husband eating all the bagged, boxed, canned food he wants. I look forward to this opportunity to love him and provide him a sense of his own dietary freedom."

This can be taken further for this Juice Feast by giving your husband the freedom and support to do something he has not felt supported in doing. Obviously it should be something that is not truly harmful or damaging to himself or your relationship - but it could be something like tickets to a game, or season tickets, or a night out with the guys, or subscription to a sports channel - you will know what would mean something to him.

Often when we Juice Feast and our spouses are not doing it, they feel like you are getting a gift they are not getting (even if they don't want to Juice Feast), and also that you are not spending as much time loving them because of all your juice-making, etc. Finding something that is a gift to them that is special at this time can mean everything to their experience during your Juice Feast, and to the feelings you have towards them during such an important event in your own life.

I hope this helps. Let me know how this one resonates.

With peaceful steps,

David Rainoshek, MA in The Green Room, www.JuiceFeasting.com

[May]

My husband has a SAD diet. He is supportive and encourages me to juice feast and not quit during detox crisis. He has seen in the past how my body immediately responds to juice feasting and the joy that it brings to all facets of my life. I often give him a sample of my juice which he loves. He will taste each new concoction and say "I understand why you love juicing'. He is in the wine industry and relates each tasting of juice as if he were tasting a wine- noting color, smell, viscosity, the palette and the finish. In the past he has even made juice for me which was so helpful. Though he hasn't been able to help with making the juice or shopping lately. Even though our food spectrums are so different, we are sill able to grow closer through juice feasting.

[SunnyFlower]

Fortunately for me, my partner has a very supportive attitude toward my JFeasting too, and even said recently that he'd like to try it. He's concerned about being able to function in a working capacity - keeping his energy up while Jfeasting. In the meantime, I prepare (cook) vegan meals for him -to make it life easier with our time.To me it just looks like 'dead food' -not appealing at all, although some of the smells are good. Weekends are the hardest for me. We had certain food we ate together and I don't like watching him eat a couple times a day or smelling it. But burning incense helped this last weekend. The wine perspective in interesting. It's great that you are able to work it out together -that's huge for success. I haven't seen many or any couples Jfeasting here. We are only a few strong but mighty Detoxing JFeasters!